First of all, this is a GREAT post! And your $72+ in HIVE rewards is totally deserved, I even threw in my 10 cents LOL.

Second, I agree on Azircon he is great. I believe his direct communication style is a cultural thing, but it never bothered me. His posts that you referenced is also the reason I have started stacking HP and while I didn't reach my 10k HP goal in 2024, I will reach it this year. Here is what happened to my HP after I read his posts 3-4 months ago:

It was him who woke me up (I never powered down I just took half of the author rewards and converted it into SPS), but it wasn't just him, once I read his posts, saw the data I became interested in HIVE and then I discovered many other great sources to learn from or very interesting to read such as Acidyo and Taraz and others.

I am still very much involved in Splinterlands and I hope it is successful long term as I am holding hundreds of thousands of SPS and a ton of card assets, but my new focus is HIVE and I hope other Splinterlands players will focus more on HIVE.

And don't let the graph on top full you, I am still very much stacking HP:

As far as Splinterlands Art contest I see both of your points yes there is clear extraction going on, the question is if the art that is being created for this contests is worth for Splinterlands to pay these artists from South America?